Don't learn openings...really?

There is one opinion that most chess players share here: you should not learn openings until you are a rather strong chess player. I do not agree with this. Of course, I am a weak player, so my divergent opinion can be regarded as a confirmation that I am wrong. But let's see what Vladimir Zak wrote about the topic. Zak (1913-1994) was an Ukrainian chess player and trainer. He worked 40 years long as a chess trainer in Leningrad. His best-known pupils were Boris Spasski and Viktor Kortschnoi.

In his book "Improve Your Chess Results" he expressed his opinion about learning openings:

"If a player learns variations without understanding the basic ideas of an opening and its characteristic type of middle-game, the result is that when he encounters something unexpected he loses confidence in himself, commits errors, defends himself weakly. Once in an unfamiliar situation, he is incapable of thinking independently, and racks his brains trying to remember the book line. In such cases, his alertness is abruptly diminished; this, as a rule, leads to mistakes and defeat. Obviously this sort of occurrence is what gave rise to the view that opening study is of small account in perfecting one's chess. This opinion, expressed in print as far back as the thirties, has been repeated in various forms and has finally acquired the status of a dogma. Yet the opening is a very important part of the game. A mistake in the opening can do irreparable damage and lead to loss, while a well-played opening facilitates the conduct of the middle-game; the latter, after all, has its basis in the opening stage". (Zak 1991, 37)

In my opinion, of the main reasons why this dogma was born and still persists has to do with (less competent) chess trainers. A chess trainer cannot be an expert in all openings, and a lot of trainers stopped to follow opening theory many years ago. There are two different strategies to deal with the problem of teaching somebody openings:

1. The chess trainer convinces the student to play his opening, no matter whether this opening corresponds to the pupil's character or not.

2. The chess trainer will convince the pupils to play an opening in which the strategic ideas of this variation is very clear and easy to teach, like Dragon - did you already ask yourself why so many juniors are playing Dragons? This is not a coincidence, as this variation is highly convenient for chess trainers. Not much is needed to learn, as the strategic idea of this variation is: White conducts a pawn-storm against Black's castled position on the kingside, while Black counterattacks with pieces against White's castled position on the queenside (and yes, don't forget sometimes the exchange sacrifice on c3).

3. The chess trainer says that It is enough for the student to play the opening using opening principles. In this case, the trainer will not analyse the opening (especially if he is not an expert in this specific opening), but the middle-game and end-game.

The problem with chess principles is that some openings require moves that seem to contradict these principles, or at least the single-minded interpretation of how the principles work. In the reality you just have to know the concrete variations. Some years ago Karpov came to Bern (Switzerland) for a simultaneous exhibition. One players was still missing, but I did not have to courage to play against the guy, so I asked a colleague of my. As he he is not a pussy like he took the challenge. Some minutes before the game he asked me how to play against Karpov with Black, which kind of openings he should expect. I said, well, you know, Karpov can play everything, but I guess he will play 1. e4 against you, and you have a good chance to play the Ruy Lopez. So we talked about the first moves of the Ruy Lopez:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6

In this point he said: "No, 3...a6 is loosing (?), as he can take my knight and destroy my pawn structure! This is against chess principles". I played the open games with White and Black some years ago and I still knew some variations (now I usually play 1.d4). So I tried to explain him that in the Exchange Variation Black get the bishop-pair, so it is a trade-of, nothing to worry about. Black should just avoid exchanges because he would have problems in the endgame, but the middle-game is not bad for Black.  I went on telling him that in the Exchange Variation (4. Bxc6 dxc6), if White castle  he could play 5...Bg4, and after 6.h3, Black doesn't have to retreat or to exchange, but can play 6...h5.

At this moment he looked at me as I would be completely crazy, he did not want to talk on openings with me anymore. I still tried to explain that  Karpov would never take this bishop, as Black will get a matting attack, but he was not listen to me anymore. He played against Karpov using his opening principles and was the first to give up in the group.

In my opinion you should teach already a beginner something about openings, middle-game and endgame. I like for instance to show the Queen's Gambit Accepted Greed d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e3 b5 4.a4 c6 5.axb5 cxb5 6.Qf3 to explain what is a pawn-chain, how to attack the basis of a pawn-chain, and when to diverge from opening principles ("do not move too many pawns in the opening", "do not get your queen out too early" etc). 

When I teach openings to beginners, I ask them to give a reason for every move they are doing. They play 1.d4 and I ask "Why do you play this?". They have to say something about placing a pawn in the center, as this is an important area in the chess board. And after 1...d5  2.c4 they have to say that this move is important because it should come before the knight comes to c3, and it takes space and will later allow White perhaps to exchange the c-pawn with the black d5-pawn, opening the c-line for White, and so on.

It is a combination of learning by heart and understanding the moves. I recommend my students to learn openings with a IM or a GM which is an expert of the opening, as for example in the website "Chessable". They have to choose what to learn, and they are totally responsible for the learning process. The people who take seriously the opening will be invariable the best in the tournaments I organise for them. I had a student who began to learn how to play chess, and after two weeks he was third of ten in a tournament, beating some players who where already playing since many years. This guy took the opening seriously. 

"... For beginning players, [Discovering Chess Openings by John Emms] will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2006) https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf
"It is important for club players to build up a suitable opening repertoire. ..." - GM Artur Yusupov (2010)

By the way, I mentioned Zak's opinion on the need of learning openings rather from the beginning. However, Zak was not a good teacher. See for example what Yermolinsky wrote about Zak in his book The Road of Chess Improvement, chapter "Classics Revisited...". Zak did not accept any openings beside e4e5 and d4d5. Yemo played of course 1. Nf3 to rebel against Zak.

"When asked by a 'patzer' how to become a grandmaster, Fischer advised him to read MCO from cover to cover, twice, ..." - StupidGM (~2 months ago)
"... tongue-in-cheek, I'm sure ..." - GM John Emms (2006)
I don't remember it being said that Fischer was answering a question about becoming a GM. Emms described Fischer as simply answering a question about chess lessons. I also don't remember anything about a "lesson" apart from the brief answer to the question.

As far as I know, everyone knows if all you do is memorize the opening moves it's bad, but if you add middlegame context and understanding why the opening moves are played then it's good.

I wasn't aware of the reason Zak gave for why openings are considered bad to study. I thought it was because beginners tend to use them as a stop gap. Chess confuses them in general, so they like to prolong the onset of this confusion by memorizing moves. You see this all the time on the forum when people ask for the one new and amazing opening that will make the victories start pouring in for them. This is the type of "study" that should be rejected.

I studied no opening until 1800. Half the time I didn't even know what I'd play until the game began. I'd get funny looks from opponents when I'd stop to think on move 1, 2, or 3 heh.

In fact now that I type this, I realize I still do this from time to time.

What matters is understanding the resulting positions. Things like pawn structure, piece coordination, and general strategic aims. The only thing you need to add to this is a good tactical eye. Not that openings are unimportant, part of learning structures and coordination comes from learning and playing different openings, but openings certainly aren't a magic bullet as you seem to be suggesting.

"... you do need to study openings at every level. But until you reach a very advanced level, what you need to do is master the principles, ideas, pawn structures, strategies, and tactics of the openings you play, and NOT to memorize long opening lines. ..." - FM chuddog (~1 month ago)

I coached a high school chess team and interacted with masters and coaches who gave me, a non-master, advice that resulted in what the local news called an "elite" chess program that was county champion most years and 3rd-5th in the state tournament 3 consecutive years.

NO ONE said don't learn openings and I doubt most do today.  What they did say is to learn good opening principles. like those in Evans et al How to Open a Chess Game, the ideas behind a few good openings, but AVOID sheer memorization of variation after variation, move-by-move.

Our team gained an edge by using openings that were out of favor at the time and others didn't study like the Bishop's Opening.  Our players knew to get in an early f4, and often f4 to f5, creating a d3-e4-f5 barrier that blocked most of Black's pieces from the King-side and, after a White O-O-O allowed a power K-side pawn storm and attack.  They didn't memorize every single move to get there but they had a plan.

A plan for the middlegame was something you didn't find in the books with titles like "Use Bobby Fischer's Openings and Win."  So we whipped the people who memorized reams of openings but didn't know what to do with them.

THAT is the point of saying "don't get caught up in openings."  We non-masters are much better with a general idea of what we want to do in an opening rather than memorizing small details ad infinitum. We are better off concentrating on tactics problems and recognizing tactics by name and pattern, including  memorizing the tactics on pages like:

https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs.html

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-tactics--definitions-and-examples

Yeah, that would be a very difficult team to face. It takes a lot more technique and understanding to deflect that sort of attack than it does to execute it.

If someone is concerned about the Exchange Ruy Lopez, then that demonstrates they do not understand chess principles.  There are many reasons for that.  We know not to move a piece twice in the opening because it costs time; a6 forces White to do this, however a small concession it may be.  It's well known that Bishops are better than Knights on an open board; if White is willfully exchanging Bishop for Knight AND opening the position, it cannot be bad for Black.  We know that we should generally keep the tension rather than breaking it; exchanging at the first opportunity breaks the tension and gives Black easy development.  In principle, there is no reason to fear an exchange.

Your story indicates that Black does not understand principles, because he is only concerned about his pawn structure.  He is rejecting a whole line because, he reasons, his pawn structure is inferior.  Weak pawns are only weak if they can be attacked, and Black's pawns are solid.  The only potential weakness is in a strict King and pawn endgame, which is a long way away.  In return, Black gets control over d5 with his new c6 pawn, he gets the half-open d-file, he gets the advantage of a Bishop over a Knight in an open position and he has easy development for his other pieces, whereas White still needs to spend a tempo moving his d-pawn.  Black has more than enough dynamic compensation, and to nix all of this because of a worry about pawn structure shows both dogmatism (must keep pawn structure at all costs!) as well as superficiality understanding, not even looking at the position more than one move ahead.  

This doesn't even mention the tactical justification behind the Exchange.

And you know what?  That doesn't even matter!  Suppose the exchange really was a huge problem and all those concerns were justified.  The very same opening principles detect other, perfectly good possibilities.  We should develop, so Bc5 is logical.  It's a mainline.  We should develop and counter-attack if possible, so Nf6 follows principles.  It's a mainline.  Heck, if we want to secure our centre at all costs, preventing any tactics whatsoever, d6 is possible and it a main frickin' line.

If you truly understand chess principles, you can mimic much of mainline theory about 80% of the time, at least in general positions.  This is because the principles are more than just 'keep your pawn structure'.  At some point, yes, you need to go beyond such generalities, but it's not at the 1300 level and it's not on move 3.

"... In the middlegame and especially the endgame you can get a long way through relying on general principles and the calculation of variations; in the opening you can go very wrong very quickly if you don't know what ideas have worked and what haven't in the past. It has taken hundreds of years of trial and error by great minds like Alekhine and, in our day, Kasparov to reach our current knowledge of the openings. ..." - GM Neil McDonald (2001)

I've reached 2100+ without really studying any openings. That's not to say that the opening moves don't matter—they matter just as much as any other move. But it's just like any other phase of the game: you sit there, consider various options and the responses of your opponent, and decide on what you think is your best move, given the position. Keep principles in mind, but adjust according to the needs of the position, as well as potential tactics.

Most of the time, the advice to "avoid studying openings" is doled out because the players who inquire about openings usually have bigger weaknesses in their game that should probably be fixed first.

As a result, your opening play will get stronger as the rest of your play improves.

Treat the opening just like the middle-game: try to find your best move—or at least a move you'd like to play. Blunder-check it. Consider all of your opponent's best responses, and look ahead a few moves in each response to see if the game will move into a position you'd like to be in. And so forth . . . 

(Also, don't be afraid to experiment and make mistakes. As long as you review your games and understand where you went wrong, you're learning and improving).

The reason you don't start out a new player just memorizing the Najdorf out to 30+ moves is that the whole point of studying openings is to preserve or eke out a small quarter-pawn to half-pawn advantage and reach the middlegame fully developed.  However, it doesn't do any good to reach the middlegame with  a 0.25 advantage if your first move out of book loses a pawn, and your next move blunders a piece.  A chessplayer at 1200 playing another at 1200 rating creates a game where the engine eval may fluctuate wildly by +5/-5 point each move.  There's no point in stressing opening study (which is not the same as just learning opening principles, or even evolving a repertoire) until a player reaches a level where they are not going to throw away their hard won 0.25 advantage 3 times over in a single move in the middlegame/endgame.

Some will toss out the argument that studying openings prevents those -0.75 inaccuracies/blunders for the first X moves of the game.  This is bogus.  A player has to learn to avoid blunders because they see the blunder, not because they memorized a line that bypasses it.  Memorization is a shortcut, and you can see it in action every time super GMs that rely on engine prep and memorizing the latest novelty play Carlsen and he plays a sub-optimal move, takes them out of their line, and then beats them with superior understanding of the position.  That lack of prep shortcutting is the 25-100 rating point difference between Carlsen and everybody else.  Not that he doesn't do the same kinds of prep, mind you, but because he doesn't rely on that prep like a crutch.

Chess has changed forever.  Fischer was the best by just beating people down with better moves, and he could even do it using the same lines over and over again.  That's largely gone now.  Anybody can have an engine show them better-than-Fischer moves in any line/variation.  The decisive difference in chess now is who is better once the memorized engine lines are deviated from.

When I was a kid I had exactly 2 chess books, the first was:

...and the second was:

...what I learned from the first book was that I should never play the Berlin defense .  What I learned from the second, which has not a single opening line in it, was enough to trounce every player I came across up to twice my age, and a majority of adult players, too.

I am just concerned about openings in which natural looking moves against forced moves do not work well. However, it is in any case better to treat the opening like a middle-game and make blunder-checks than to play automatically and confident when you know the lines and lose completely the concentration and self-confidence by the first unknown move. The last situation is probably very common among a lot of weak players (including perhaps me).  In any case, if you have a great memory you will probably do well in reviewing the first 10 moves and trying not to repeat the mistakes. With my bad memory and my age - I am already 55 - this is not enough. I have to remember repeatedly my repertoire to be competitive against stronger players. 

I have some copies of the second book and motivate my students to learn chess with it. Some beginners make nice improvements in a couple of weeks learning from it. For the people who do not know the book, it is about checkmate, only one diagram per page, and not using any notation. With this book the novices will learn to see what is going on on the board and of course how to checkmate. 

well said op , i agree openings are vital otherwise its tough to get a good middlegame       

the reason i think openings are important is this. would you rather waste a minute of your game time thinking on a move in the opening to make sure there are no tactics or waste a second of your time because you know exactly what to do?

To advice someone not to study openings makes no sense and does them no service. You can play perfectly along "general principles" that you are taught near the beginning and still wind up utterly ruined without an understanding of common trap lines, pitfalls, gambits and tricks found lurking in dozens of openings. 

General principles are better than none. 

But, even if you know the openings by rote, you have to know common trap lines, pitfalls, gambits and tricks found lurking in dozens.